Trust
by PinkWhirlWind
Summary: When Yuki needs trust, he leans he must give it first.. and Yuki's not really his name.
1. Default Chapter

Trust By Nix Disclaimers: I don't own Gravitation  
  
The worst kind of lonely is wishing to reach out, to touch, not being able to cross some invisible line in one's own head.  
  
The therapist stared quietly at Yuki. "And why can't you do this thing?"  
  
Yuki didn't want any more medications. He didn't want something that he couldn't explain. He wanted. He wanted something he couldn't explain. "Why should I do this thing?"  
  
"Because it is truly what you wish to do," she said softly, the sound of her pen flowing over the paper almost louder than her words. "You know whom you wish to trust."  
  
"I'll ruin him," Eiri whispered, studying the bland white ceiling for all he was worth. "He's too valuable to me."  
  
"Eiri," his therapist said, changing the tone of their session, transgressing some boundary that he'd put in place between them long ago. "Eiri, you went to New York and you nearly chose not to live. Now you are here, but you can't go home. Home is too dark and to familiar with grief. You are brave, Eiri. Go to him and ask him to call you by your name. Ask him to go with you into this new place of understanding. As Aretha did in your last book. You want to make that journey on your own, do you not?"  
  
"Shuichi is an idiot." Yuki said coldly, but it felt as if he were trying to drown himself, crushing his own heart as he said it.  
  
"We have agreed not to lie to each other. Do you really feel your lover is an idiot?"  
  
"No." Yuki closed his eyes. "I'm going to have a panic attack right now though. We need to cut this session short."  
  
His therapist nodded. "Are you going to do it then?"  
  
The panic attack grabbed Yuki then, tingles up the back of his neck, breath that wouldn't come. He sat up, swung his legs over the edge of the couch and gripped it with both hands. If he wasn't careful, he'd forget how to breath all the way. "I can't live like this!"  
  
"Do you want me to write you another prescription, Yuki-san?"  
  
"No." He swallowed, closed his eyes and imagined that picture of them, of Shuichi so full of life, bouncing like a maniac behind him, imagined Shuichi's voice and words and he combed his hair back, great messy blond history. It was hair that he always wrote about, in his novels, people with beautiful hair and beautiful eyes, and beautiful tragic lives that always came out happy by 'The End'. He wasn't like that. Every day he woke up and it still hurt. What he'd done was like a vampire, sucking away any life he might have.  
  
It was Shuichi pouring life into him, like the sun pouring energy into some damn plant that had been locked in the closet. The sunlight was there. Life was there. He just had to open the god damn closet door!  
  
"How do I open the door? You're so smart. How do I get out of the closet," he asked her, not expecting her to answer or have any idea what he was talking about.  
  
She'd been his therapist for a long time though, and many other clients before there was a Yuki Eiri. "Forgive yourself, Uesugi Eiri. Trust in at least one person."  
  
"Forgive?" He looked up, only then realizing that he'd bowed his head. "Forgive? Uesugi Eiri is dead."  
  
"No, he's not. He comes to see me every week at just this time. Trust and forgiveness, Eiri. Give someone your name."  
  
It was bullshit and he knew it. And yet, he couldn't live like this. "That's it? That's all you've got to say after all the money I've paid you?"  
  
She smiled, eyes too plain to be in a romance novel, and yet there was something in them that woke something in him, that cracked that door just a little. "Try it."  
  
He stood up then, running thoughtful fingers over the stubble on his cheek. It had been two days since he'd been home. He hadn't even called Shuichi, but he knew that his lover would be estatic to see him, would rush him and wrap him in his arms. Quite suddenly, he wanted that, wanted Shuichi's embrace, his sunlight. "Next week," Yuki said.  
  
Once in his car, Yuki pulled out his phone, dialed the number for Shuichi's mobile phone with his thumb. It rang and rang and the light turned green and it rang on more. Each ring was like the light from the crack of the door getting smaller, dimmer. Finally he closed and threw it against the passenger door. Trust? What was trust? He brought his sunglasses forward and hit the gas.  
  
Middle of the day, he hit the on ramp and sailed towards the coast. He didn't know where he to go, or why, just not here, not alone, not with lies. The panic attack was coming back and he wished it would just kill him, just . something.  
  
Police lights slowed him though and he pulled over, running senarios through his head. 'Popular Novelist Shot in Police Misunderstanding' 'Formerly Popular Novelist Arrested for Excessive Speeding Tickets.' When the police officer got to his window, he smiled at him and handed him his driver's license.  
  
Then the phone started ringing.  
  
"You can answer that, Yuki-san," the man said, pleasantly smiling before continuing with his ticket.  
  
He didn't want to answer it though. Still he leaned over and picked the thing up. He didn't want to police officer to think he was as upset as he was. 'Novelist Confined in Mental Hospital' was not going to be a headline any time soon. "Moshi Moshi."  
  
"YUKI! Where are you? Oh Yuki! I saw your number and I called right back! Suguru had my phone and he didn't answer it! Yuki! Where are you? I miss you so much!"  
  
Yuki held the phone from his hear a bit and the police officer was trying not to laugh. "Yuki-san, my wife reads your books and my son has posters with your partner all over his bed room. I have to give you the ticket, but I didn't write it for 102, only for 85. Would you please give me your autograph?"  
  
"YUKI? A hundred and 102?!"  
  
Yuki groaned, but in that groan.. he found the door to the closet open, light filling his space. He found maybe not forgiveness, but a reason to value himself and a trust in his pink haired partner. He held up a finger to the police officer. "Shuichi, take a week from work, go to the coast with me?"  
  
"Yeah, sure Yuki, anything you want. Pick me up at NG?" Confusion, but acceptance hung in Shuichi's voice and whatever was with Shuichi's phone, Yuki could hear Suguru groaning about needed to rehearse in the back ground.  
  
"I will be there. I want to talk to you, tell you everything," he said, still holding his finger up to the get the police officer to wait. Silently he added, to Shuichi, 'I want to tell you my real name, because I trust you.'  
  
After he closed the connection with Shuichi, he gave the police officer two autographs and shoved the speeding ticket in the glove box with the other two. He'd pay them, soon even. Today though, he was going to pay for the sunlight with a little trust. 


	2. two

Trust 2  
  
Depression leaves. The void it leaves comes as a great surprise to some though. Yuki watched the girl make his coffee, but his mind wasn't really following her. His thoughts ran through memories of Shuichi.  
  
He started with the first attraction he'd felt. In the park, the energy and excitement, the very life in Shuichi had both drawn him and woke in him the life he'd thought long dead. That first insult had been directed both to the pink haired energy youth and the youth that lingered in the shadows of his own heart. It hadn't been about Shuichi having talent. In truth, he suspected if the boy had had no talent, that the moment would never have happened between them. That zap of attraction, protection, and insult would not have snapped between them if Shuichi had been untalented.  
  
The moment turned in his memory making more facets. He'd shown writing to someone in a park once. Idly, he picked up a coffee stir stick and pulled his sunglasses down over his eyes. That moment in the park, that had been a new start.  
  
Of course, it could have all faded away, gone back to the smothering misery he'd had before, if Shuichi had not practically killed himself in front of his car. Yuki wondered if he'd ever have another rainy night and not think about Shuichi, arms out, rain-wet hair in his face. That moment in the park though, it was the start of the remembering  
  
How fast old defenses and pain flared, burned through his numb soul, and turned to ashes under the fire that was Shuichi's love. Pain had been a constant companion, but Shuichi had forced his way into that place in Yuki's heart, forced out the hurt, but not without a fight from the hurt. Some woman, blond, nicely built smiled at him then, though she recognized him maybe, and he turned away, picking up a mint from the counter, held it up to the clerk and she nodded, that she'd charge him for it. Shuichi liked mint kisses.  
  
When he'd told Shuichi that he didn't want him because of poor sex skills, he'd though it true at the time. Didn't sex just coil around the soul sometimes though? He rolled the mint on his tongue. Shuichi made him want, desire, woke his body as well as his memories, made everything messy and too real, clumsy and as he pressed the mint to the top of his mouth, too sweet.  
  
The therapist, his doctor, wanted him to give Shuichi his real name, to move away from having his lover call him by the name of his teacher, of the man he'd killed and hated himself for killing for years. Standing in the coffee shop, he found it hard to imagine writing a character who would have his lover call him by the name of a man who had sold him for just enough American money to buy a couple of cheap American wine. How clear things could get in the light of Shuichi's fire. Pink fire.  
  
"Yuki-san," the girl said, stressing it as if it were the second time she'd said it.  
  
"Ne?" He asked, handing her a couple of notes that paid the bill and then some. "Arigatou."  
  
The coffee tasted harsh on his tongue. The light reflecting off the windows of the Nittle Grasper Records building seemed harsh as well, but he embraced it. He was done with shoving both Shuichi and his own heart away. Eiri. Coffee in hand, he pulled his sleeve back and looked at his watch. Half an hour until he could pick up Shuichi without getting his lover in trouble.  
  
Traffic seemed light so he crossed, long steps and a cocky mood, maybe from the sunlight now hitting the back of his neck. The automatic doors opened and he moved without hesitation into Shuichi's and Tohma's domain. Tohma. The need to see his sister's brother took him quite by surprise. It wasn't much of a surprise to find Tohma in the elevator when the doors opened.  
  
"Eiri-san," the his blond relative said, a look of concern, anxity on his face, growing quickly into alarm and Eiri opened his arms and took him into a hug. "Eiri?"  
  
"Tohma," Eiri said. "Thank you."  
  
"Eiri," Tohma said, real concern in his voice now. "Is everything alright?"  
  
"Yes," he answered in English, a language that had so many meanings layered on it for him. "Yes, everything is fine. I'm here to pick up Shuichi. I'm taking him to the coast."  
  
Tohma leaned back a little, his hands taking hold of Eiri's shoulders, eyes searching his face. "Where have you been? What's happened?"  
  
Eiri smiled, taking his sunglasses off. He wasn't ready to be as easy and open with Tohma as his brother-in-law might have liked, but he didn't feel like running either. "A little more time, Tohma. Lunch when I get back?"  
  
"Yes, of course, Eiri-san," Tohma said in that soft voice of his and Eiri wondered what it would be like to hear Tohma sing.  
  
"I have things to say to you, but when I come back."  
  
"Yes, yes, of course. It is so nice to see you so changed, Eiri-san." Tohma tilted his head and smiled.  
  
Such beautiful eyes, Eiri thought, if the world had been different. "When I come back, Tohma-san."  
  
He blinked again. "When you come back. Take Shindou then." He said, as if rather bemused by the change in his friend, confused by it almost, as if the void left by Eiri's departed misery left him without really knowing what to do as well. "Things have changed?"  
  
Eiri shrugged, but there was that bit of smile at the edge of his lips as he took his sunglasses all the way off. If he said something about pink fire to the Tohma, his friend would think him mad perhaps. "When I come back."  
  
Tohma turned and watched Eiri get in the elevator and Eiri watched him as the doors closed.  
  
Somehow he thought it was the happily ever after now, at least in this moment. Stories never went far enough. They never showed what to do after the horror, after the tears. People were just supposed to know how to live, how to breath, how to take the ones they loved in their arms. Nervous now for some reason he didn't take time to explain, he straightened his hair in the chrome of the elevator.  
  
This time when the elevator doors opened it was Shuichi that launched through them. "YUKI! Yuki! I'm so happy to see you!"  
  
He had no time to see what his singer wore or anything else before the ball of pink fire, of vital life energy had him pressed back against the elevator wall, arms around his neck, lips to lips. Shuichi's tongue slipped into his mouth, his fingers into his hair. The doors closed behind him and blindly Eiri reached for the emergency stop button. Maybe he couldn't wait till they got to the coast. 


	3. three

Trust 3  
  
The trip to the coast was silent. Shuichi got more anxious. He loved Yuki. Loved him with all his being, but he was always feeling on the edge of losing him. It upset his stomach, worrying about what it was that Yuki had wanted to tell him.  
  
"Can't you tell me now," he asked, an almost whiny tone in his voice.  
  
"No." Yuki said it coldly, watching the road, trying not to think about how he was going to explain to Shuichi what he needed to. It would be so simple. Call me Eiri. My name is Eiri. It just involved crossing over to trusting Shuichi, to showing him his real face, his heart. It was a great deal different being able to be the cold one, the impeccable prince, writer extraordinaire, something less and more than human. "Be quite, Shuichi."  
  
"I wish we were still in the elevator," Shuichi pouted, sticking his arm out the window to catch the air as they went around the corner. Yuki was driving too fast, but that wasn't anything unusual.  
  
"It would be nice if it were always easy and sweaty," Yuki said, kicking himself for the sting in his words.  
  
Shuichi looked down at his bare knees, rubbed the edge of one shoe against the other and thought about the practice he was missing for this. "Why did you bring me, if I just irritate you, uh? It's been like this for the last month. Stop being mean, uh? If you're building up to tell me something I don't wanna hear, just do it."  
  
One hand on the wheel, Yuki ran his other hand through blond hair. This had been so much easier, hugging Tohma even. "I don't understand why this has got to be so hard. Shuichi, I don't want to hurt you."  
  
Sighing, Shuichi lay the seat back and stared at the sky. "Like you didn't mean to be driving a 102? Yuki, I love you."  
  
"I know you do," Yuki said, turning off the main road, heading towards NG Record's beach house.  
  
Suddenly it felt more relaxed off the main road, on the rougher gravel road, just the two of them. Or maybe it was that Shuichi had said he loved him, yet again. "I love you too, Shindou Shuichi."  
  
"You do?" Shuichi sat up, tripping the lever on the seat so quickly that the seat almost smacked him into the dashboard. "Say it again, Yuki! Tell me you love me again!"  
  
Yuki looked at him out of the corner of his eyes, but pulled the car up beside the beach house and cut the lights. There in the dark they sat, Shuichi vibrating in his seat, Yuki shivering deep inside so that it didn't show. "I love you, baka."  
  
"Yuki!" Shuichi said, launching himself across the small foreign car. Yuki opened the door and let Shuichi almost sail right out the door, but at the very last moment he caught his floating lover and pulled him close, holding him like a bride in his arms as he stepped out of the car, Shuichi's arms around his neck. "Say it again, Yuki!"  
  
"Don't call me that and be quiet, Shiuchi, just for another moment, please."  
  
"Sure," Shuichi said, leaning back a little, so violet eyes could look into golden eyes, "You sure you'd okay?"  
  
"I saw the therapist today." Yuki set Shuichi down on his feet and walked away as he drew the key from his jacket pocket.  
  
"So you're okay, right? You don't have to take any more medications, right?" Shuichi followed along hands shoved in the pocket of his shorts. He wanted to sexual tension back that they'd had in the elevator. He wanted anything but this drain on his feelings. Without warning, Yuki rounding on him, leaving the door unopened and caught him by the shirt, pulling him close, until they were nose to nose.  
  
"My name is Eiri. That's my first name. Don't call me Yuki anymore. You're too important to me. My name is Eiri, Shuichi."  
  
Shuichi tilted his head just a little, their eyes still locked. "Eiri," he whispered, leaning closer. Lips to lips, familiar lips, and yet completely brand new. His breath fluttered in his throat .. his chest and he rose up on the balls of his feet, one arm going around Eiri's back. "Eiri. I love you, Eiri."  
  
Coming Next. Lemon. 


	4. four

Trust 4/4, ff.net version  
  
By Nix Winter  
  
Disclaimers: I do not own Gravitation. The creator has done different things with them and the manga is coming out in the US. I urge you to buy them. It's just in my imagination that Eiri and Shu sat at a beach house and discussed their hearts.  
  
Notes: I had expected this chapter to be a lemon. It's not. I waited. It didn't change. This story was about trust, originally, about speaking one's true name to one's love. I hope I can get a lemon from the next chapter, but for ff.net this story will finish with this chapter.  
  
Warnings!!!! Note! Discussions of their past, spoilers for the series, assumptions about what happened in the garage. It's an angst frothy chapter.  
  
Trust  
  
Eiri stood on the back porch, watching the waves roll in. The sky was blue, the beach white and the ocean endless. Uesugi Eiri felt Japanese, felt like he belonged in this picture. His name was Uesugi Eiri. Behind him, in their beach house, he could hear Shuichi's muffled singing. Eiri didn't even have to turn around to see him to know that he was dancing in the kitchen, headphones on, shorts mostly dusted free of sand and no shirt at all. The singing was muffled because Shuichi was trying to sing without making any sound and he couldn't hear himself. The music was so loud in those headphones that Eiri could hear it all the way out on the porch. Shuichi fit into this picture of Eiri's life too.  
  
The tide was slipping away, pulling at the wet sand each time it fell back. Eiri had expected it to hurt more, this letting go of Yuki. When he'd torn the photo, dropped it into the ocean that day at the amusement park a kind of pain had swelled in him, taking the pain that ate his stomach away and banding his heart until his whole body ached. Surviving can break the heart.  
  
And yet  
  
Here he was. Shuichi loved him. "Hey Brat!"  
  
Pink hair and violet eyes peeked out the open door. "Yu," he paused, "Eiri?"  
  
"So you can hear under those things. I don't know how you manage it." Eiri turned, leaning against the railing, ocean breeze picked up his hair. "Come here?"  
  
Shuichi shoved his headphones off and stepped out on the porch. He was waiting for the other shoe to drop. It showed in the tension in those slender shoulders, the way his feet took an almost defensive posture. "It's my fault," Eiri said, tilting his head, taking in all of Shuichi, from the sun burn started on his shoulders and nose to the way his knee had started a very slight nervous twitch. "It's my fault you're nervous now. It was because I had to be Yuki and no one could really have Yuki, no one could love him."  
  
"But I love you, Yu... Eiri. I love you, Eiri." Shuichi said, looking if anything a little tenser now.  
  
Uesugi Eiri had never backed down from anything. He hammered his plots until they worked, he forced smiles and faced people who despised him because he didn't look the way a Japanese should. He'd faced the grief he felt over Yuki once he'd made the decision to live. "I know you do, Shuichi. I love you too."  
  
"Eiri!" Shuichi nearly screamed before Eiri found himself wrapped in violet-eyed singer. "Say it again, Eiri!"  
  
"I love you, Shindou Shuichi," Eiri repeated as he scooped his lover up in his arms, one arm under his knees, the other hugging Shuichi close. "I want to put lotion on your shoulders."  
  
"Is it going to be lemon flavored lotion?" Shuichi asked, nuzzling Eiri's shoulder.  
  
"Not really." Eiri said as he set Shuichi down on the bathroom counter and opened the medicine cabinet. "I just wanted to talk, about, uh why I'm such an asshole sometimes."  
  
"It doesn't matter, does it? I mean, just be nice from now on." Shuichi smiled, but it only lasted a moment before it twitched away. "Eiri, it feels weird to call you that, but if you wanna talk, we can talk about whatever you need to. I'll listen."  
  
"Yuki's dead, I shot him." Eiri said, feeling that band tighten around his heart again. Outside on the porch, he'd felt so good, so much like he belonged. Now, now he wondered if he could trust Shuichi at all. The world wasn't fair; giving him a lover he loved with all his being, but maybe couldn't trust. "And then I couldn't let him die."  
  
"Why? Eiri, why did you shot him?" Shuichi asked. His voice had lost that summer at the beach lightness, had lost some element of frivolous Shuichi.  
  
There it was. This was the big thing between them. They'd been dancing around it, from the day Shuichi had showed up in an ugly flower print dress, through Eiri thinking he was going to just die when he got it off him and both of them went through the motions, made love though it hurt, joined, coupled, bruised hearts and tender flesh.  
  
Eiri laid his head on Shuichi's shoulder. Shuichi wrapped an arm around Eiri's back, and they both looked at each other in the mirror because they couldn't look at each other directly. To be raped is to be told in a language so deep that the soul understands even if the mind doesn't, to be told that you are less than worthless, that your pain brings another pleasure. Shuichi brought his fingers up and combed them through Eiri's blond hair.  
  
It was a whole in both their souls, a hole too large to cross, as they stared at each other. Tears came easily to Shuichi, as if violet could slide right down his cheek. "Eiri," he said the name slowly, as Eiri's fingers came up to touch the tears on Shuichi's cheek. "We were talking about trust earlier, and you said I should call you by your real name. You gave me your name, I'll show you my heart, my whole soul, everything I am."  
  
"You always do, Shuichi," Eiri said, bringing his fingers back to his mouth and licking the tears away. "I know what Aizawa did to you."  
  
"How do you know," Shuichi asked, his voice gone deadly thin. "The photos?"  
  
"Never developed." Eiri said. "I know, because I see myself in you. I see it in the way you wince in your sleep. In the way you freeze when we make love. I see it in the way you struggle to write. Now listen to me, please."  
  
"Okay," Shuichi squeaked, his knees drawing together even as he held tighter to Eiri.  
  
"I thought, just now, when you asked me about lemon lotion, if I trusted you or not. I thought maybe I had a choice, but I don't. I trust you more than any one I've ever known and if I can't show you my whole heart and soul then I'll never show them to anyone."  
  
Shuichi blinked, bits of information finally catching up to one another. "That's why you shoot him. Because he raped you?" Color drained from Shuichi's cheeks as he said that and Eiri reached up to touch his face again, caress his cheek.  
  
"No. There were two other men. He sold me to them. I was so angry. All the anger that had been in my life till then just strangled out of me. I killed all three of them and Tohma covered it up."  
  
"Eiri," Shuichi said one hand holding Eiri's hand to his face.  
  
"Do you know how I learned that I wasn't," Eiri couldn't say it, couldn't say or find a word that meant dangerous, worthless, vile, diseased.  
  
"How?" Shuichi asked, like he wanted to know the answer too.  
  
Eiri pulled back and took Shuichi's chin between his fingers, looking directly into his eyes. "Because when you were raped, I loved you just the same. What they did, did not change how valuable you were to me, how precious and innocent and creative. I love you just exactly the same and you were willing to kill, to leave Bad Luck anyway, to protect me, even when you thought I didn't want you anymore. So I began to understand that what happened to me didn't ruin me either. Can you really love me, knowing I was raped by two men and that I shoot them and a man I admired in the rage after? Really look me in the eyes and love me?"  
  
"Eiri," Shuichi started, laying a finger over Eiri's lips. "I thought a part of me died that night in the garage. Just stopped. I didn't know how anyone could hate me that much, that I had to have done something real bad, and at first I thought it was because I loved you so much and that it was wrong for me to, to love you, cuz you were a guy. Tohma said it was my fault that you went away and I should have," Shuichi stopped talking eyes dropping until Eiri's finger lifted his chin.  
  
"Did you think about dying?"  
  
Shuichi grimaced his nose wrinkling, "No. I mean, I thought I ought to consider that. It would have honorable. But mostly I just kept thinking I'd be okay if you were near me. I'm bad and greedy."  
  
"So am I," Eiri said sliding his thumb over Shuichi's lips. "I have no right to desire you, to want the pleasures of life. From the moment I met you in the park, the safe numbness I'd been hiding in has faded. Now I either trust you and I learn to live, or I shut down, and I'm lying to myself if I try to believe I have any other options. I love you and that love pulls trust out of me like some happily ever after in one of my books. Don't be angry with yourself for what happened in the garage anymore, Shuichi. It wasn't your fault and it doesn't change how beautiful you are to me, how precious. Do you trust me?"  
  
A silence settled between them, with Shuichi reaching to touch Eiri's face, trace the track of tears he hadn't cried. "Eiri," Shuichi whispered, "I do trust you and if you say it didn't make me ugly or bad, I believe you. There are a million fans out there buying my music, buying posters of me to put on their walls, but none of them see me like you do. It's not just how my heart got hurt by what happened. It's that it hurt. It tore and I screamed and it hurt." Fresh tears burned down his face and from Eiri's eyes as well. "You have to trust me that it's not about you, when I pull away, or when I freeze. It's not about you, because I want your touch, I live for it. I trust you and I crave you."  
  
Eiri found his smile again, just a small smile, but he reached up and brushed his fingers trough Shuichi's hair. "It's this living thing, makes me feel alive when I think about you. I did something auto-erotic once while listening to your CD."  
  
Shuichi blushed, then laughed, chin to his chest, giggling. "I wonder if I could sing while we, uh," he said, blushing even brighter.  
  
"Come here, let's go watch the sun set," Eiri said, pulling Shuichi from the counter as the smaller singer wrapped his legs around Eiri's waist, his arms around his neck. As Eiri carried him back out to the porch, Shuichi's head on his shoulder, he promised, "I'll kill anyone who hurts you again."  
  
"No," Shuichi said, rubbing his cheek against Eiri's, "Just trust me. I can heal from anything, as long as you still think I'm wonderful."  
  
The sun was golden, red, the beautiful Japanese sun over the ocean as Eiri sat down on the porch steps. To compliment Shuichi so openly, was to say that maybe he wasn't stupid, maybe he was right about Eiri being worth loving. That made it take a couple breaths. "I will always think you're wonderful, Shindou Shuichi, my wild little pink haired lover. I will trust you like the Earth trusts the sun, and I'll orbit around you forever."  
  
"Hey," Shuichi sat up, then shyly, almost as if he was kissing Eiri for the first time, "You be the sun, I'll be the Earth. Cuz you're all golden and I got an Earthy mind."  
  
"Dirty mind," Eiri corrected, "Very dirty."  
  
"Whatever," Shuichi said, slipping off Eiri's lap to sit beside him, holding his hand as they watched the sun slip into twilight. "What if I always flinch, when we have sex?"  
  
"I'll love you and trust you if we never have sex again and I'll be happy so long as we wake up next to each other and you smile at me." He squeezed Shuichi's hand slightly, avoiding his lover's searching look.  
  
"If we never have sex again, we'll wear out a lot of my CDs."  
  
Laughing, Eiri teased, "I thought you used Nittle Grasper CDs."  
  
"Hey! I have your books on CD. That works good." Shuichi laid his head against Eiri's shoulder. Eiri laid his head against Shuichi's head. "Eiri."  
  
"Um?"  
  
For just that moment, it seemed to them that Eiri was the man he would have been if he'd never carried the grief for what Yuki had brought into his life and Shuichi had never gotten trapped in the garage. It wouldn't last this time, but they were in this moment, not some other one.  
  
"Thank you for trusting me."  
  
End of ff.net version 


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